fearful misbelief, indeed we dared not, but further misery has not been inflicted. We have indeed done penance for our weakness, severe penance; for Father Tomas asserts that we have most grievously sinned; and more, have pledged ourselves most solemnly, that what he may counsel for the entire uprooting of this horrible heresy, and accursed race, shall be followed, cost what it may, politically or privately; but to refuse the last boon of the unhappy girl, who had so strangely, perchance so bewilderingly, wound herself about my heart Stanley, I must have changed my nature first!" "Her last boon! Gracious Sovereign—” "Nay, her last to her Sovereign, my friend. It may be that even yet her errors may be abjured, and grace be granted in her solitude, to become in this world as the next, what we have prayed for; but we dare not hope it; nor must thou. She besought permission to return to the home of her childhood, pledging herself never to leave it, or mingle with her people or ours more." "And she is there! God in Heaven bless, reward your Highness for the mercy!" burst impetuously from Arthur. "I trust she is, nay, I believe it; for Jewess as she is, she would not pledge me false. In the garb of the novice, as she saved thee, Father Denis conducted her to the frontiers of Castile. More we know not, for we asked not the site of her home." There was a few minutes' pause, and then, with beseeching eloquence, Arthur conjured the Sovereign to let him see her once, but once again. He asked no more, but he felt as if he could not sustain the agony of eternal separation, without one last, last interview. He pledged his honor, that no temptation of a secret union should interfere with the sentence of the Queen; that both would submit; only to permit them once more to meet again. Isabella hesitated, but not for long. Perhaps the secret hope arose that Stanley's presence would effect that for which all else had failed; or that she really could not resist his passionate pleadings. "One word of retraction, and even now she is thine.— And I will bless thee that thou gavest her to me again," she said in parting; but her own spirit told her the hope was vain. Half an hour after this agitating interview Arthur Stanley was again on horseback, a deep hectic on either cheek; his eye bloodshot and strained, traversing with the speed of lightning the open country, in the direction of Castile. CHAPTER XXXIV. "Oh! love, love, strong as death--from such an hour Holy and fervent love! Had earth but rest For thee and thine, this world were all too fair: "But woe for him who felt that heart grow still THE glowing light of a glorious sunset lingered on the Vale of Cedars, displaying that calm and beautiful retreat in all the fair and rich luxuriance of former years. Reuben and Ruth, the aged retainers of the house of Henriquez, had made it their pride and occupation to preserve the cherished retreat, lovely as it had been left. Nor were they its only inmates; their daughter, her husband, and children, after various struggles in the Christian world, had been settled in the Vale by the benevolence of Ferdinand Morales-their sole duty, to preserve it in such order, as to render it a fitting place of refuge for any who should need it. Within the last twelve months, another inmate had been added to them. Weary of his wanderings, and of the constant course of deception which his apparent profession of a monk demanded, Julien Morales had returned to the home of his childhood, there to fix his permanent abode; only to make such excursions from it, as the interests of his niece might demand. Her destiny was his sole anxious thought. Her detention by Isabella convinced him that her disguise had been penetrated, and filled him with solicitude for her spiritual, yet more than her temporal welfare. Royal protection of a Jewess was so unprecedented, that it could only argue the hope-nay, perhaps conviction-of her final conversion. And the old man actually tried to divorce the sweet image of his niece from his affections, so convinced was he that her unhappy love for Arthur, combined with Isabella's authority, and, no doubt, the threat of some terrible alternative should she refuse, would compel her acceptance of the proffered cross, and so sever them for ever. How little can man, even the most gentle and affectionate, read woman! It was the day completing the eleventh month after Don Ferdinand's murder, when Julien Morales repaired earlier than usual to the little temple, there to read the service for the dead appointed for the day, and thence proceeded to his nephew's grave. An unusual object, which had fallen on, or was kneeling beside the grave, caught his eye, and impelled him to quicken his pace. His heart throbbed as he recognized the garb of a novice, and to such a degree as almost to deprive him of all power, as in the white, chiselled features, resting on the cold, damp sod, he recognized his niece,.and believed, for the first agonizing moment, that it was but clay resting against clay; and that the sweet, pure spirit had but guided her to that grave and flown. But death for a brief interval withdrew his grasp; though his shaft had reached her, and no human hand could draw it back. Father Denis had conducted her so carefully and tenderly to the frontiers of Castile, that she had scarcely felt fatigue, and encountered no exposure to the elements; but when he left her, her desire to reach her home became stronger, with the seeming physical incapacity to do so. Her spirit gave way, and mental and bodily exhaustion followed. The season was unusually damp and tempestuous, and, though scarcely felt at the time. sowed the seeds of cold and decline, from which her naturally good constitution might, in the very midst of her trials, otherwise have saved her. Her repugnance to encounter the eyes or speech of her fellows, lest her disguise should be penetrated, caused her to shrink from entering any habitation, except for the single night which intervened, between the period of the father's leaving her and her reaching the secret entrance to the Vale. Her wallet provided her with more food than her parched throat could swallow; and for the consuming thirst, the fresh streams that so often bubbled across her path, gave her all she needed. The fellowship of man, then, was unrequired, and, as the second night fell, so comparatively short a distance lay between her and her home, that buoyed up by the desire to reach it, she was not sensible of her utter exhaustion, till she stood within the little graveyard of the Vale; and the moon shining softly and clearly on the headstones, disclosed to her the grave of her husband. She was totally ignorant that he had been borne there; and the rush of feeling which came over her, as she read his name the memories of their happy, innocent, childhood, of all his love for her-that had he been but spared, all the last year's misery might have been averted, for she would have loved him, ay, even as he loved her; and he would have guarded, saved so overpowered her, that she had sunk down upon the senseless earth which covered him, conscious only of the wild, sickly longing, like him to flee away and be at rest. She had reached her home; exertion no longer needed, the unnatural strength ebbed fast, and the frail tenement withered, hour by hour, away. And how might Julien mourn! Her work on earth was done. Young, tried, frail as she was, she had been permitted to show forth the glory, the sustaining glory, of her faith, by a sacrifice whose magnitude was indeed apparent, but whose depth and intensity of suffering, none knew but Him for whom it had been made. She had been preserved from the crime-if possible more fearful in the mind of the Hebrew than any other-apostacy and though the first conviction, that she was indeed "passing away" even from his affection, was fraught with absolute anguish, yet her uncle could not, dared not, pray for life on earth. And in the peace, the calm, the depth of quietude which gradually sunk on her heart, infusing her every word and look and gentle smile, it was as if her spirit had already the foretaste of that blissful heaven for which its wings were plumed. As the frame dwindled, the expression of her sweet face became more and more unearthly in its exquisite beauty, the mind more and more beatified, and the heart more freed from earthly feeling. The reward of her constancy appeared in part bestowed on earth, for death it self was revealed to her-not as the King of Terrors, but as an Angel of Light, at whose touch the lingering raiment of mortality would dissolve, and the freed soul spring up rejoicing to its home. It was the Feast of the Tabernacle and the Sabbath eve. The tent-formed of branches of thick trees and fragrant shrubs-was erected, as we have seen it in a former page, a short distance from the temple. Marie's taste had once again been consulted in its decorations; her hand, feeble as it was, had twined the lovely wreaths of luscious flowers and arranged the glowing fruit. With some difficulty she had joined in the devotional service performed by her uncle in the little temple-borne there in the arms of old Reuben, for her weakness now prevented walking-and on the evening of the Sabbath in the Festival, she reclined on one of the luxurious couches within the tent, through the opening of which, she could look forth on the varied beauties of the Vale, and the rich glorious hues dyeing the western skies. The Sabbath lamps were lighted, but their rays were faint and flickering in the still glowing atmosphere. A crimson ray from the departing luminary gleamed through the branches, and a faint glow-either from its reflection, or from that deceiving beauty, which too often gilds the features of the dying— rested on Marie's features, lighting up her large and lustrous eyes with unnatural brilliance. She had been speaking earnestly of that life beyond the grave, belief in which throughout her trials had been her sole sustainer. Julien had listened, wrapt and almost awe-struck, so completely did it seem as if the spirit, and not the mortal, spoke. "And thine own trials, my beloved one," he said,—" Has the question never come, why thou shouldst thus have been afflicted?" "Often, very often, my father, and only within the last few weeks has the full answer come; and I can say from my inmost heart, in the words of Job, 'It is good that I have been afflicted, and that I believe all is well. While on earth, we must be in some degree of earth, and bear the penalty of our earthly nature. The infirmities and imperfections of that nature in others, as often as in ourselves, occasion human misery, which our God, in his infinite love, permits, to try our spirit's strength and faith, and so prepare us for that |